The Plot to Assassinate Hitler and Konradin’s Execution

The Plot to Assassinate Hitler and Konradin’s Execution reaches Hans Schwarz not through a narrated account of the conspiracy or its aftermath, but through a terse printed entry he nearly destroys before reading. Its disclosure that Konradin von Hohenfels was implicated in a plot against Adolf Hitler and executed turns an unresolved absence into a final fact, while leaving the plot’s details unstated.

The Printed Appeal and the Resisted Name

The printed matter arrives uninvited, disturbing the peace Hans Schwarz has tried to preserve by forgetting his past. He waits over it, then attempts to return to work, making phone calls and dictating letters. Yet he can neither put the appeal aside nor bring himself to look up the name that continues to haunt him. Ordinary tasks fill the interval without resolving his hesitation.

At last, he considers destroying the object rather than learning what it contains. He reasons that whether Konradin is dead or alive would make no practical difference if they could never meet again. But the thought does not settle the matter: he cannot rule out the possibility that Konradin might still appear at the door, and he catches himself listening for his footsteps. The contrast between his declared acceptance and his continued expectation gives the delayed reading its emotional force.

The Entry Under H

Hans takes hold of the little book and is about to tear it up, but stops. Trembling, he steels himself and opens it at the letter H. The sequence makes the act of reading a threshold: before it, Konradin’s fate remains unknown and imagination can keep the possibility of reunion open; afterward, a few printed words replace that uncertainty with an irreversible outcome.

The entry identifies Konradin by the family name von Hohenfels, states that he was implicated in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler, and records that he was executed. It supplies no account of the conspiracy, Konradin’s role in it, or the circumstances of his execution. The printed notice is therefore both conclusive and sharply limited: it settles whether he survived, but leaves the history behind that fact largely unfilled.

Revelation and Narrative Significance

The disclosure arrives only after the narrator has spent time avoiding it. That delay shifts emphasis from the mechanics of the plot to the experience of receiving news: the book’s brief entry ends a long uncertainty, while the narrated hesitation shows that the possibility of Konradin’s return has persisted despite Hans’s efforts to dismiss it. His imagined open door and listening for a footstep stand against the finality of the record.

The discovery also gives the event a double significance. Konradin’s execution is a political fact, connected by the entry to opposition to Adolf Hitler; for Hans, it is the confirmation that the friend he has not seen again cannot return. The evidence offers no reconciliation or further explanation, only the stark conclusion Hans had tried not to seek.